'He will now spend the rest of his life in jail after the historic conviction for the 1981 killing – the oldest prosecution for murder ever brought in Ireland.'
Killer Noel Long was “cocky and sleazy” and believed he had gotten away with the perfect murder of Nora Sheehan, a former cold case detective has claimed.
Her naked and bruised body was found by forestry workers at The Viewing Point, Shippool Woods in Cork six days after she went missing. He told how prime suspect Long, who has a 1972 conviction for sexual assault and multiple assault convictions, could not be charged due to a lack of concrete evidence.
Long was arrested on June 16, 1981, and charged with murder, but the pathologist who carried out the postmortem, Dr Robert Coakley, died on August 5, 1981.But advances in forensic science matched a partial DNA profile generated from semen found in the body of Nora Sheehan and preserved for decades to DNA on clothing taken from Long in 1981. He was charged again with the murder of Mrs Sheehan on June 28, 2022.
“You can never say never with a cold case investigation and the success of this prosecution shows just that. Her family have waited so many years for this justice and I am so happy they have finally got it. It is one of those cases that was still with me. I was so happy to hear of the prosecution.” In her victim impact statement, Katie Sheehan said her grandmother’s life was “taken from her in the cruellest way imaginable”.
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